Another weekend, another field… with a hedge

It’s Friday lunchtime and the Bristol Wireless/Psand cybertent at the Ragged Hedge Fair at Abbey Farm near Cirencester has running for about 2 hours now; the suite and the site wireless access (which I’m using) are all running off wind and solar power kindly provided by Magrec Ltd., next to whom we’re pitched.

The advance crew – Mike, Lloyd, Bails, Rich, John the Cook and your correspondent – all arrived on site yesterday evening: the tent was up in an hour, followed by Lloyd and Mike setting up the satellite dish (after chocking the van) in the gathering gloom. Mike tells me we’re pointed at the Hellas Sat 2 satellite and we’ve confused dear old Google again, which still thinks we’re in Germany; our wrongfooting as regards location does have some advantages – it confuses the hell out of targeted advertising. 😀

The remaining work of getting the tent set up – laying out laptops, chairs, signs, literature and our advocacy boards – passed pleasantly and well-fuelled by a steady supply of caffeine, so we ended up meeting our projected 12-noon opening time.

We’re still in the process of finding out how much current we’re pulling. The editorial laptop draws about 70 W when charging and 30 W when charged. All the LTSP laptops are all running on a 12-volt supply. Clive Magrec is currently investigating a conundrum with the inverter; this is an interesting position after the luxury of unlimited generator power at Cullompton last weekend (news passim).

We’re still awaiting the final crew arrivals before the full cybertent complement is on site, but we have enough crew to cope for the moment, although tomorrow will be busier.